Pragmatic bootstraps for category assignment: from non-discourse towards discourse oriented language

Abstract

This article presents the acquisition graphs for D/I-marking in early Dutch child language. Two major considerations will be derived. Firstly, the acquisition of the D/I-system will be construed as the key to the N/V-category assignment, a reversal of Pinker’s bootstrapping scenario (Van Kampen 1997). Secondly, empirical facts will support the idea that D/I-marking is the universal step for setting up discourse grammar. Data from early child language show that 1) content words start as category-neutral signs X, and not as N or V; 2) functional words are ideal bootstraps for category assignment, because of their high token frequency. Curiously enough, the functional words themselves do not start as Do or Io . They rather appear as illocution operators added to a content sign. E.g. in Dutch child language, later demonstratives appear at first as illocution markers of gesture deixis in presentational utterances. Later finite verbs start as illocution markers of subjective modality in deontic/volitional utterances. These early illocution signs are completely situation oriented. Only later they are interpreted as pronominal markers of referential opposition (Do ) or syntactic predicate markers (Io ). As signs of syntactic deixis, Do /Io identify distinctions that maintain a presence of information the speaker may refer back to by the grammatical devices of discourse grammar. Empirical support for this view follows from the acquisition of discourse anaphora and discourse connectives.